Myron G. Barlow (May 1870, Ionia – 14 August 1937, Étaples) was an American figurative painter. A gold medalist in international art exhibitions, he had a home at the Etaples art colony (the colony a place in France in which American artists converged before World War 1). He was friend to Henry Ossawa Tanner. He also remained a resident of Detroit.
Biography
Myron G. Barlow was born on April 15, 1873 in Ionia, Michigan of the marriage of Adolph and Fanny Barlow. His father had been born in Breslau, Germany, immigrating to the United States in 1849 and serving in the Union Army with the 5th Michigan Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Barlow trained at the Detroit Museum School (later the Detroit Fine Arts Academy), where he studied with Joseph W. Gies (1860–1935), then at the Art Institute of Chicago. He began his career as a "sketch artist" on the staff of the Detroit Free Press.
Barlow left for Europe in 1893 to study, and, upon his arrival in France at the age of twenty-one, was noticed by William Bouguereau. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme. In Amsterdam he discovered Johannes Vermeer while reproducing paintings at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. His paintings have been compared to Vermeers, many featuring women set into a "dreamlike atmosphere", caught frozen in a moment, with the image dominated by an overall color. An overall theme throughout his paintings is the depiction of "the luxury of the poor." Another critic described his art as showing the quiet "resignation of feminine labor."
Around 1900 in France, Barlow settled in Trépied, near Étaples and joined the Étaples school of painters. He used three models in this period; Julie Sailly, Louise Descharles (born in 1909) whom he would paint for twenty years, and her sister Marie. Possibly he had more than one Louise as a model, or one model had three names over time; Louise Perrault, Louise Grandidier and Louise Descharles were all cited as Barlow's model.
He ran an art school in Etaples. Among his students was James S. Booth.
Barlow was a regular exhibitor in the Paris Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts), and his name was used in newspapers in the United States to denote American participation in the event. In 1907, he was the only American elected to the society. Like the Société des Artistes Français, which put on the Paris Salon, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was a professional association which put on art exhibitions. He became a full member of the society in 1915, when his paintings won the gold medal. He exhibited consistently over years, and it was noted that critiques of Salon works often found time to mention his paintings.
In 1914, he was a founding member of a group in France calling themselves the American Artists Association, along with Frederick Carl Frieseke, Richard E. Miller, Myron Barlow, George Elmer Browne, Max Bohm, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Walter Griffin, John Noble, Charles Hawthorne and George Oberteuffer.
Barlow returned temporarily to the United States when the German army in World War 1 overran the area he lived in, near Belgium. His work was part of a group of American paintings brought from France to San Francisco on the Navy ship U.S.S. Jason, for exhibition in the Panama-Pacific Exhibition. For that show, he exhibited the same paintings which won him full membership in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and they won the gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition as well.
He lived for a period in "artist's colony", whose members included Joseph Gies (one of Barlow's former teachers), Frances Paulus, Ivan Swift, and John Morse.
In Detroit, he was president of the Scarab Club around 1918. Among his major accomplishments were four large murals which he painted for the main auditorium of Temple Beth-El, completed in 1925.
He is recognized for his work with gold medals at the St. Louis and Panama Pacific exhibition, and for having his works purchased by numerous international museums, including the Quentovic Museum in Étaples in France, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit Club and the private collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild include works by Barlow.
After World War 1, he returned to France in May 1920.